Friday, June 03, 2016

If Trump is a fascist then he will fit in nicely with the pantheon of
horrific men we are told to respect and venerate. Barack Obama charges
and convicts whistle blowers with the little used espionage act from the
era of Woodrow Wilson. He claims and has exercised an invented right to
kill Americans. His predecessor invaded and occupied Iraq but he
continues the dirty deed there and in Afghanistan. He tries to fool the
public by assassinating “al Qaeda number two,” over and over again. Al
Qaeda certainly doesn’t lack for plan B staffers.Bush the younger cut tax rates for rich people but Obama didn’t
change that. Under the guise of compromising with intransigent
Republicans he did the same thing. When he and the Democrats controlled
Congress in 2009 and 2010 they raised the minimum wage a paltry 70
cents.

Conversely, Donald Trump says he would raise the minimum wage and
says he would stop the endless efforts at regime change. Neither Hillary
Clinton nor Bernie Sanders have questioned that fundamental premise of
American foreign policy. Hillary Clinton has already proven herself to
be particularly blood thirsty. She is happy to bomb Libya or Syria [. . .]

We don't have a lot of choice, do we?

In our supposed democracy, it's not even just the lesser of two evils anymore, it's something far worse.

I can remember some Americans in the media being thrilled at the collapse of the USSR.

You have to wonder about the democratic experiment, where it's headed and what that means for the future of the United States?

The path we are on is not endless.

There is a dead end up ahead.

That's most obvious in terms of the environment.

But the destruction we are imposing goes far beyond just our eco system.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, June 1, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the assault on
Falluja despite lies from the western media, war crimes continue, the
United Nations releases their body count for the month of May, and much
more.

The war that began with heavy assistance from a lying press continues to be a war riddled with press lies.

Most recently?

As noted in yesterday's snapshot,
the claim that the battle for Falluja was halted due to the concern of
what might happen to the 20,000 civilians trapped in Falluja.

The claim is a lie.

We'll get to that.

First, when we expressed doubts about the claim in yesterday's snapshot, I noted:Haider al-Abadi is saying civilians at risk is why he's halting the battle of Falluja (temporarily). Maher Nazeh (REUTERS) reports, "Iraq has delayed its
assault on the city of Falluja because of fears for the safety of
civilians, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Wednesday, as his
forces halted at the city's edge in the face of ferocious resistance
from Islamic State fighters."

Kind of feels like it's more due to "the face of ferocious resistance"
that it's being halted. In the next snapshot, we'll note how UNICEF's
not usually so important. (I'm not insulting UNICEF, I'm referring to
their inability to have an impact regarding Iraqi coverage, let alone
stop a battle.)

UNICEF did issue an alert Wednesday morning about the 20,000 children trapped in Falluja.

But UNICEF does many things -- many important things -- and most of the time the press can't even bother to note UNICEF.

For example, for over a year, Iraqis -- predominately Sunnis --
protested and the western press largely ignored them. The protesters
were not violenct.

But they were frequently the victim of government violence carried out on then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's orders.

Late Wednesday night, Mustafa Saad (ALSUMARIA) reported
that Haider al-Abadi declared there was no delay in Falluja operations
and quoted Haider stating, "We are following the plan for the liberation
of Falluja and there is no delay in the operation."

So a lie got widely repeated by the western media.

The lie just happened to make fumbling and bumbling Haider al-Abadi look better.

The western media repeated a lie that just happened to make the US-installed prime minister look better.

It wasn't true.

But it would make the world believe that Haider cared about safety and justice.

An obvious lie but one that the US State Dept continually repeats.

From Wednesday's State Dept press briefing by spokesmodel John Kirby.

QUESTION: Okay. There are some 50,000 people that are inside
Fallujah, civilians. And people – as the battle looms, or maybe the
entry into Fallujah is being planned, do you have any provisions to take
care of these people? Does the United States on its own or together
with the Iraqi Government have any kind of contingency plan to look
after these people?MR KIRBY: We’re certainly deeply concerned about the civilian
population in Fallujah, and you’re right, they are trapped and they’ve
been trapped there. Now, as I understand it, the Iraqi Security Forces
are already going into this operation but are doing what they can to try
to provide avenues of escape for some civilians. And I want to be
careful not to speak specifically to what is in fact an ongoing
operation, but there are provisions being made to try to help people get
out and to care for them when they do. Obviously, as a member of the
coalition, the United States continues to support those efforts and
we’ll certainly do what we can, but this is – as I said, this is an
Iraqi Security Force operation.

Over the weekend Iraqi officials confirmed that Iraq's controversial
Popular Mobilization Forces [PMFs], Shiite-dominated militia groups, are
participating in the fight for Fallujah, just west of Baghdad in
central Iraq.
Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Departments of State and Defense have
reported continued instances of war crimes over the past year in Sunni
areas north of Baghdad such as Tikrit — showing that some groups in the
military and militias on Baghdad's payroll have not stopped committing
abuses since an ABC News investigation revealed widespread atrocities
posted on social media 14 months ago.

Nour Malas (WALL STREET JOURNAL) offers more on the topic of the Shi'ite militias:A decade ago, the Iraqi known to U.S. officials as Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi
was in a cat-and-mouse game with U.S. forces and on the run from a
Kuwaiti death sentence for allegedly orchestrating bombings at the
American and French embassies there in the 1980s. The U.S. Treasury
lists him as a terrorist.

Today, the shadowy figure—known mostly by his nom de guerre, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes—is
the most influential commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, or
PMF. The force of mostly Shiite Muslim recruits is Iraq’s parallel army,
crucial in successes against Islamic State in the past two years,
filling the gap after the regular army crumbled and the U.S. moved to
help rebuild it.[. . .]Iraq’s Iran-backed militias are “the infrastructure of future civil
wars,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad.

As the abuses continue, some in Iraq's political circles call them out. AFP reports:

Iraqi parliament speaker Salim Al Juburi said on Thursday he
was concerned over reports of abuses committed by government forces
against civilians during the current operation to retake Fallujah.

He
cited reports of mistreatment of civilians by members of the federal
police and the Shiite majority Hashed Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation)
paramilitary forces and urged prime minister Haider Al Abadi to enforce
discipline among government ranks.

Salim al-Juburi is one of the highest ranking Sunni politicians (the
highest ranking one if you believe Haider's truly abolished the vice
presidencies).

In other news, Haider's cut off Baghdad's bridges and roads, ALSUMARIA reports, in an attempt to halt protests by followers of Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Meanwhile, with May over, the United Nations has released their figures (an undercount) of deaths and injured in Iraq for the month:

The number of civilians killed in May was 468, including 19 federal
police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities
protection police and fire department, while the number of civilians
injured was 1,041, including 96 federal police, Sahwa civil defence,
Personal Security Details, facilities protection police and fire
department.
A total of 399 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including
Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army, but
excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 418 were injured, UNAMI
said.
The overall casualty figures rose from the previous month of April, where a total of 741 were killed and 1,374 were injured.
The figures for May are likely to increase because they do not include
the casualties from Anbar Governorate, a scene of heavy combat in recent
days and where the ongoing conflict has made any kind of verification
extremely difficult, UNAMI said.

Finally, the US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in IraqRocket artillery and fighter and remotely piloted aircraft
conducted 17 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s
government:-- Near Qaim, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Albu Hayat, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb.-- Near Fallujah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL
tactical units and destroyed 10 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL
vehicle, an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL heavy
machine gun, and an ISIL-used tunnel system and damaged a separate ISIL
fighting position and denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.-- Near Haditha, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.-- Near Hit, a strike destroyed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical
units and destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL vehicle, and
an ISIL assembly area and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position.-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed three ISIL rocket rails and an ISIL rocket system.-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL heavy machine gun position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb factory.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in
counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a
strike.

But Cranky Clinton can just hang in no matter how much damage she does to the party."TV Wayward Acting" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW): But when FOX has a hit -- a rare thing these days -- they have to milk it.
So we get season two.

Which might work if it had a star to anchor it.

Jason Patric is an effective actor.

He's not a star.

As multiple films have demonstrated, he cannot command the screen the way Matt Dillon can.

The first episode brings back some familiar faces. Terrence Howard is
back as the crooked sheriff. Hope Davis is back as Megan, the creepy,
Hillary Clinton-look alike cultist. Carla Gugino is back as
revolutionary Kate. Charlie Tahan is back as Ethan's son Ben.

But even with a dramatic moment from Kate, the episode moves along about as gracefully as a tugboat.

That's due to Patric and his deep desire to 'Act.'

Matt Dillon doesn't prove he can act, he just acts.

Season two of WAYWARD PINES has to be the most disappointing show of the summer.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, Glen Ford offers a
look at who's backed the Islamic State, the battle for Falluja is
allegedly put on hold, UNICEF expresses alarm over the 20,000 children
trapped in Falluja, and much more.

Who should we trust on Iraq?

Liars and whores?

There are so many liars and so many whores that it can be difficult to know who is who.

We'll name a name in a minute but let's show how common sense can tip you off that you're dealing with a liar or a whore.

Falluja is the birthplace of Isis. Unknown to many, Falluja fell under jihadi control in January 2014
after months of violent protests and conflict, long before Isis (a
rebranded version of al-Qaida in Iraq) became as known to the world as
it is today. Retaking Falluja will deliver a psychological blow to Isis,
given the city’s symbolic importance. It will also generate great
momentum for the broader military campaign and effort to liberate Mosul, Isis’s principal stronghold in Iraq, where it declared the establishment of its “caliphate” in June 2014.
But it remains unclear how much Isis and its fighters, who are heavily
assimilated into the local population and have significant local
support, will invest in any counter-offensive in Falluja.

Did you catch the lie?

If you missed it, the lie is "after months of violent protests."

They were not violent protests -- unless you're speaking of Nouri al-Maliki's assault on protesters.

Here's another reality, there's no link.

The claim is put forward without a link.

Now there can't be a link because they weren't violent protests.

But that's how you know you're dealing with a liar and/or whore.

They start tossing out links to this or that assertion but on the really
big one, they don't provide a damn link and hope to hell you don't
notice.

And long before the article Ranj links to about the Islamic State taking
control of Falluja, you had them physically announcing their presence.

Why?

Residents were blocking the main road between Baghdad and Falluja in
their protests, trying to make Nouri al-Maliki respond to the peaceful
protests.

And Nouri began threatening the protesters even more than before at
which point the Islamic State went public and stated they would protect
the protesters.

You have them showing up, all in black, surveying the protest on that main road.

This is in the archives because unlike THE GUARDIAN, we covered the year
long protests every damn Friday when the people turned out.

We usually had to depend on Arabic media to cover those protests because the western media was not interested in them at all.

So the world really doesn't need a flunkie of War Criminal Tony Blair emerging to lie about Iraq.

Yes, in December of 2012, a Sunni politician (Saleh al-Mutlaq) got
things hurled at him in Ramadi (not Falluja) by the Sunni protesters.
That's because al-Mutlaq was an appeaser to Nouri al-Maliki who was
persecuting the Sunnis. (An appeaser? While Vice President Tareq
al-Hashemi became a heroic figure to many Sunnis because of Nouri's
persecution of him, Saleh early on made a deal with Nouri to stop the
same persecution.) That's also not violence, I'm so sorry.

Nouri having reporters kidnapped from their lunch because they covered
the protests, having them beaten while they were in his forces custody,
that's violence.

The Hawija massacre?

That's violence.

And if you're too lazy/busy to go through the archives for a year of snapshots, you can just refer to Renad Mansour's AL JAZEERA report from today:It was the first major city to be taken by ISIL, in other words, its
residents were the first to allow for this alternative to the central
government. This sense of disenfranchisement among Fallujah's residents
grew rapidly during former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's second term,
2010-2014, when overcentralisation policies marginalised the local
population.In spirit with the so-called Arab Spring, local residents took to the streets to voice their grievances and protest against Maliki's policies,
including his targeting of their leadership. In response, the former
premier opened fire. Fallujah was the first city to see Iraqi forces
killing protesters. As repression grew, so did resistance. This
eventually paved the way for the re-emergence of ISIL, only a few years
after al-Qaeda was kicked out of the city.

That's the reality that a Tony Blair flunkie won't ever tell you.

Nor, apparently, will the western press.

The western press spent the bulk of 2010 through 2014 -- thug Nouri's
second term as prime minister of Iraq -- covering for Nouri by refusing
to report what was really going on.

First they imposed tough restrictions on Internet usage and cellphone
networks in Iraq's second-largest city. Now Islamic State militants
appear to be targeting another staple for residents there: television.

What makes that an embarrassing article?

Let's start with the internet.

Current prime minister Haider al-Abadi's been pulling the plug on the net for some time now.

Last week, he stopped many Iraqis from posting civilian realities in
Falluja. He also prevented Shi'ite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr from
posting plans for a protest last Friday.

Those are just two recent examples.

And then to TV?

He's shut down two satellite channels in the last few months.

I'm not remembering THE POST rushing its herd of reporters to cover those actions.

It's not truth.

It's lies.

That's why the nonsense of tired [use slur of your choice] like Robin
Morgan with her ranting and raving over the Islamic State in Iraq came
off as such nonsense.

To hear her rant, it was the Islamic State causing all the problems for
Iraqi women when they were just taking the crimes against women and
girls -- already carried out by the Iraqi government -- and upping them
further.

Yanar, you’ve been an activist and
a defender of women’s rights in Iraq for over 13 years. What do you
think are the main challenges women in Iraq are facing right now?

We focused in the last year on working against trafficking in women and
girls and expanding a new network, the Network of Anti-Trafficking of
Women in Iraq. We started the network in 2013, barely nine months before
ISIS began gaining ground in Iraq. As ISIS grew, they started their
attacks against women in the north of Iraq, including against the women
of Yazidi faith. They trafficked them in broad daylight.

Trafficking in women and girls is now a
tactic used by opposing groups in instances of sectarian violence in
Iraq. Women and girls are looked upon as the representatives of a
community’s honor, and so the sexual exploitation of women and girls
belonging to a certain community is seen as the most effective way to
humiliate and break it. Unfortunately, it is therefore not a surprise
that the so-called Islamic State, ISIS, as a Sunni group, has targeted
non-Sunni Muslim women and girls such as Shi’a Muslims, Christians, and
Yazidis. Retaliations ensue and wars are led on women’s bodies.

When ISIS began to enslave women, we found
that this was the time when we should rise to the occasion and
highlight the issue of trafficking in society and the government. This
is an issue that needs to be addressed by laws, practices, programs, and
by some understanding from the society as to what it means that a woman
gets compromised, gets exploited, and gets enslaved. So we set up this
network, which is now about 40 NGOs working together on the issue. We
began to talk about trafficking in women and girls, especially sexual
exploitation, and address it as something that’s not only happening
under ISIS but also happening in Iraq more broadly, without anybody
daring to give it any importance.

Beyond ISIS, orphans and widows of war in
Iraq who are extremely impoverished have fallen prey to sexual
exploitation. They are being used and exploited and violated daily in
Iraq, without anybody thinking of it as a human rights issue. So this is
our focus; we have decided we will work on this until we get the
government to pass laws that make the suffering of these women less, and
also that open the way for us to protect the women from this kind of
violence.

[. . .]

Can you tell me about the shelters that your group runs?

Our shelters are currently keeping safe women who survive trafficking.
They are also getting educated; our shelters are not only a place for
women to rest and be safe, they are also schools for social
transformation for women to turn from victims into defenders of women.
We only had one shelter until 2008; since then we have expanded to have
six shelters all over the country. We also have a pipeline from the
southern city of Busra, to direct violated women to our shelters in
Baghdad. And we have many supporters in the network of the 40-plus NGOs,
who are our eyes and ears in more than nine cities in Iraq and are
guiding women who are in need of shelter to us. I like to put it in a
very short story: our organization was able to spread its wings over
most of the Iraqi cities in the last few years.

However, the Iraqi government is not
facilitating our undertaking of women into our shelters. And it boils
down to one point—we need a piece of legislation from the Iraqi
government to provide legal status to shelters that are run by NGOs or
other private sector groups. Although the government does not have a law
that says that our shelters are illegal, they do have a law that allows
the ministry of social affairs to determine if they should stay open.
So some of the tribal and misogynist officials did tell us in the past
that we are doing an illegal thing, but they did not shut us down.

So, although we are protecting women from
trafficking and domestic violence and all that—although we are doing the
duty of the government, the duty the government is not taking seriously
and do not want to move on, and although they should be supporting us
and applauding us for doing their job, in reality they confront us,
telling us that our sheltering of women is promoting promiscuity, that
it is encouraging women to go against their families and have full
sexual freedoms and come stay in our shelters. So some governmental
officials have intimidated us in the past, telling us we are doing
something illegal, when we are protecting women.

It's a reality idiots like Robin Morgan never grasp.

It's as though she's never learned from enlisting in Bully Boy Bush's
war on Afghanistan that would supposedly 'liberate' the women and girls
there.

Find Robin a war you can sell on lies about women and she's foaming at
the mouth and crotch in her desire to enlist and fuel the propaganda.

Which probably explains why Robin is supporting War Hawk Hillary Clinton
in the battle for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and
not Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders despite the fact that Robin
herself has been a Democratic Socialist for something like four decades
now.

Who should we trust on Iraq?

Robin Morgan and WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER that failed to cover Abeer in any
significant manner. Apparently, the gang-rape and murder of an Iraqi
girl by US troops who were supposed to be protecting her neighborhood
wasn't worthy of serious coverage.

May 7, 2009, former US soldier Steven D. Green was found guilty on all counts for his role in the Iraq War Crimes from March 12, 2006, when Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was gang-raped and murdered, her five-year-old sister was murdered and both of her parents were murdered. May 21, 2009,
the federal jury deadlocked on the death penalty and instead sentenced him to life in prison. May 28, 2009,
Green appeared in court as the family of Abeer gave their statements
before leaving to return to Iraq. WHAS11 reported on those court
proceedings in real time:

Gary Roedemeier: Crimes were horrific. A band of soldiers convicted of planning an attack against an Iraqi girl and her family.

Melissa
Swan: The only soldier tried in civilian court is Steven Green. The
Fort Campbell soldier was in federal court in Loussivell this morning,
facing the victims' family and WHAS's Renee Murphy was in that courtroom
this morning. She joins us live with the information and also more on
that heart wrenching scene of when these family members faced the man
who killed their family.

Renee
Murphy: I mean, they came face to face with the killer. Once again,
the only thing different about this time was that they were able to
speak with him and they had an exchange of dialogue and the family is
here from Iraq and they got to ask Steven Green all the questions they
wanted answered. They looked each other in the eye. Green appeared
calm and casual in court. The victims' family, though, outraged,
emotional and distraught. Now cameras were not allowed in the courtroom
so we can't show video of today's hearing but here's an account of what
happened. (Video begins] This is a cousin of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl
raped and killed by Steven Green. He and other family members in this
SUV were able to confront Green in federal court this morning. Their
words were stinging and came from sheer grief. Former Fort Campbell
soldier Steven Green was convicted of killing an Iraqi mother, father
and their young daughter. He then raped their 14-year-old daughter,
shot her in the head and set her body on fire. Today the victim's
family was able to give an impact statement at the federal court house
the young sons of the victims asked Green why he killed their father.
an aunt told the court that "wounds are still eating at our heart" and
probably the most compelling statements were from the girls' grandmother
who sobbed from the stand and demanded an explanation from Green.
Green apologized to the family saying that he did evil things but he is
not an evil person. He says that he was drunk the night of the crimes in
2006 and he was following the orders of his commanding officers. In
his statement, Green said if it would bring these people back to life I
would do everything I could to make them execute me. His statement goes
on to say, "Before I went to Iraq, I never thought I would
intentionally kill a civilian. When I was in Iraq, something happened
to me that I can only explain by saying I lost my mind. I stopped
seeing Iraqis as good and bad, as men, women and children. I started
seeing them all as one, and evil, and less than human." Green didn't
act alone. His codefendants were court-martialed and received lesser
sentences. Green will be formally sentenced to life in prison in
September. [End of videotape.] The answers that Green gave were not
good enough for some of the family members. at one point today, the
grandmother of the young girls who were killed left the podium and
started walking towards Green as he sat at the defendant's table
shouting "Why!" She was forcibly then escorted to the back of the court
room by US Marshalls. She then fell to the ground and buried her face
in her hands and began to cry again. The family pleaded with the court
for the death sentence for Green. but you can see Green's entire statement to the court on our website whas11.com and coming up tonight at six o'clock, we're going to hear from Green's attorneys.

It's real easy to pretend to care about Iraq.

You toss out Abeer's name, for example, in a sentence. Maybe you do it
in 2007 while you're pitching WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER and the need for
independent media (yes, I'm thinking of one woman but being kind and not
naming her) but then you and WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER never bother to
explore the topic. You use her name to raise money.

We apparently need a new independent media to liberate independent media.

But a woman stepped forward in 1999 and stated he had raped her -- and made her accusation while he was president.

She has stood by her story all these years.

This is a serious charge.

Bill Clinton has never spoken to these allegations.

He shouldn't be out on a campaign trail right now unless he can speak to it.

I hope he didn't rape her.

But that charge is out there and has been for over 15 years.

He should have addressed it long ago.

He should be asked about it every day until he addresses it.

Don't pretend to care about assault if you're not going to publicly
agree that if a woman makes an accusation against a powerful man --and
stands by it that accusation for years -- that the man doesn't need to
be asked to respond publicly.

Rape is not a 'silly' issue. And if someone's accused of it, you'd think they'd want to go on record denying it.

The U.S. claim that it is waging a global “war on terror” is the biggest lie of the 21st
century, a mega-fiction on the same historical scale of evil as
Hitler’s claim that he was defending Germany from an assault by world
Jewry, or that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a Christianizing
mission. In reality, the U.S. is the birth mother and chief nurturer of the global jihadist network – a truth recognized by most of the world’s people, including the 82 percent of Syrians
that believe “the U.S. created the Islamic State.” (Even 62 percent of
Syrians in Islamic State-controlled regions believe this to be true.)Only “exceptionalism”-addled Americans and colonial-minded Europeans
give Washington’s insane cover story the slightest credibility. However,
it is dangerous in the extreme for any country to state the fact
clearly: that it is the United States that has inflicted Islamic
jihadist terror on the world. Once the charade has been abandoned; once
there is no longer the international pretense that Washington is not the
Mother Of All Terror, what kind of dialogue is possible with the crazed
and desperate perpetrator? What do you do with a superpower criminal,
once you have accused him of such unspeakable evil?President Vladimir Putin came closest last November, after Russia
unleashed a devastating bombing and missile campaign against the Islamic
State’s industrial scale infrastructure in Syria – facilities and
transportation systems that the U.S. had left virtually untouched since
Obama’s phony declaration
of war against ISIS in September of 2014. The Islamic State had
operated a gigantic oil sales and delivery enterprise with impunity,
right under the eyes of American bombers. “I’ve shown our colleagues
photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the
scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” said Putin.
“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of
kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch
beyond the horizon.” Russian bombers destroyed hundreds of the oil
tankers within a week, and cruise missiles launched from Russian ships
on the Caspian Sea knocked out vital ISIS command-and-control sites.Putin’s derision of U.S. military actions against ISIS shamed and
embarrassed Barack Obama before the world – an affront that only a
fellow nuclear superpower would dare. Yet, even the Russian president
chose his words carefully, understanding that deployment of jihadists
has become central to U.S. imperial policy, and cannot be directly
confronted without risks that could be fatal to the planet. Simply put,
Washington has no substitute for the jihadists, who have been a tool of
U.S. policy since the last days of President Jimmy Carter’s
administration.

Today, UNICEF sounded alarms over the 20,000 children trapped in Falluja.

At least 20k children trapped in Fallujah, #Iraq - food & medicine running out & clean water in short supply

110 retweets77 likes

Haider al-Abadi is saying civilians at risk is why he's halting the battle of Falluja (temporarily). Maher Nazeh (REUTERS) reports, "Iraq has delayed its
assault on the city of Falluja because of fears for the safety of
civilians, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Wednesday, as his
forces halted at the city's edge in the face of ferocious resistance
from Islamic State fighters."

Kind of feels like it's more due to "the face of ferocious resistance"
that it's being halted. In the next snapshot, we'll note how UNICEF's
not usually so important. (I'm not insulting UNICEF, I'm referring to
their inability to have an impact regarding Iraqi coverage, let alone
stop a battle.)

The US didn't stop bombing Falluja today -- no concern for 20,000 children, apparently. The US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in IraqAttack, bomber, fighter, ground attack and remotely piloted
aircraft conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support
of Iraq’s government:-- Near Fallujah, four strikes struck three separate ISIL
tactical units; destroyed seven ISIL fighting positions, three ISIL
vehicles, five ISIL heavy machine guns, two ISIL bunkers, three ISIL
weapons caches and an ISIL improvised explosive device; suppressed an
ISIL tactical unit; and denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Hit, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL
recoilless rifle and two ISIL boats.-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck four separate ISIL tactical
units and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, 14 ISIL assembly areas,
five ISIL vehicles, an ISIL command-and-control node, an ISIL vehicle
bomb facility, an ISIL vehicle bomb, four ISIL weapons caches, four ISIL
rocket rails and an ISIL mortar system and suppressed a separate ISIL
mortar position.-- Near Rawah, a strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb factory.-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and suppressed an ISIL mortar position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL refueling station.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in
counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a
strike.